


A Spiral of Moths and Madness

by wraithwitch



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 00:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4586793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithwitch/pseuds/wraithwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was not widely known and was never legally recognised, but for precisely seven days in the early winter of 1817, the absent Ashfair House did have an heir."</p><p>This was written for Somethin-Strange from the Society of Magicians Auction House. The request was for Mad!Strange being taken care of by Norrell in the Tower of Darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Somethin-Strange](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Somethin-Strange).



* * *

It is not widely known and has never been legally recognised, but for precisely seven days in the early winter of 1817, the absent Ashfair House did have an heir. 

* * *

For a long time Mrs Strange’s condition is not apparent, as her figure is such that the babe nestles very neatly within her and makes scarcely a single move or complaint. Arabella’s understanding of the truth of the matter is the impetus for her return to England, and Lady Pole and the Greysteels are happy to accompany her. Arabella Strange disembarks at Portsmouth in June in the close company of Lady Pole and Miss Greysteel. The three take up residence together in a little house on the outskirts of Lewes, close to where Flora’s father and Aunt live. 

On a bleak, blustery morning on the last day of October, assisted by Lady Pole and Flora, Arabella gives birth to an elfin, sickly little wisp of a thing. Fearful, yet uncertain why, she nurses and watches over it for seven days and seven nights without sleeping, a soft corona of silvered light playing about her brow and smiling down at the babe like a star all the while… 

She awakes with a start on the eighth morn to the tolling of the bells at St Tomas-a-Becket. When she looks at the babe cradled upon her breast it is pale and perfect and beautiful - and dead. She begins to keen and hug it closer, whereupon the little corpse turns into moths the colour of the moon which scatter: a flock of tiny, fluttering ghosts.

Strange has remarked frequently to friends that when magic is being done nearby there is an inch of skin at the back of his neck that in response tingles and itches like a gnat bite. He’s told in passing too how rowan berries and salt cellars set his magic a little off kilter… But he never mentions that when Arabella is unhappy, the mourning ring he wears on the fourth finger of his left hand becomes uncomfortably cold. 

Its presence is usually cool even in the balmy climes of Faery, and Strange has recognized its chill as a twin of his own dull ache and sorrow that Arabella is not by his side. On the once or twice the ring has cooled further he has always found a quiet room in which to scry with his silver dish, as if by looking upon her and murmuring, “Oh Belle, please don’t cry my love,” he might soothe her despite the fact she can neither see nor hear him. When he has gazed upon her he’s seen her supporters also - Flora, Lady Pole, Dr and Aunt Greysteel… He always tells himself sternly to take comfort in the knowledge she is amongst friends. But it is a very bleak comfort; abruptly he quits the room, the moonish light of the scrying spell winking out as the door closes behind him.

On the thirty-first of October, Strange is alarmed when the mourning ring manifests ice. 

That night, from within a mirror, Strange sees his wife weeping in her bed, surrounded by a scattering of dead moths. He cannot see any cause to explain either her distress or the dead moths - and yet he feels they are of significance. He performs _Seeing Through The Eye of the Daughter of Heaven_ \- a very odd little spell that requires one to meditate upon the sun and a feather set upon the pan of a weighing scale. Done in a slip-shod manner, it can tell a forged item from its genuine brethren - or vice-versa. Done correctly and meticulously, it will show the true and entire heart of a matter. 

The heart of Arabella’s matter splits his own in two and casts both into dust to wither and die.

Jonathan Strange cannot go to his wife, he cannot even comfort her: he is locked within the darkness in the Other Lands on the far side of Hell on the marchlands of Agrace. The Raven King rules in Agrace as he does in swathes of Faery and England, but for his own reasons he has not seen fit to build roads from Agrace to the other realms - least of all England. 

Strange is not even there to hold Belle’s hand, let alone the babe’s. How might it have been different had he been there? He could have helped - he could have saved the child and stopped this misery, he is certain - what else was magic for? 

_WHAT ELSE WAS MAGIC FOR?_

His eyes become rivers he does not know how to stop. He strikes his fist upon the silvered glass in a rage born of misery the depth of which he has not thought possible and is ignorant how to bear.

In Arabella’s room, the looking glass on the dressing table cracks with a sound like thunder. Startled, she looks up, but sees nothing but shattered fragments of her own raw-eyed reflection staring back at her.

* * *

“Mr Strange, sir! What on earth are you about?” Nothing as such has happened, but the kick of magic as it gathers is so strong it has woken Norrell and sent him hurrying in his nightgown, banyan and cap to the library. 

Strange is standing at the hexagonal card table where his silver dish customarily sits. The dish is discarded on the floor and the table is covered in books, open and scattered around a large candelabra. There is ink and quills also and a decanter of brandy that is missing its stopper. “I must return,” Strange says without looking round. He drains his glass of brandy, pours another and continues to scribble notes.

“I beg your pardon?” Norrell blinks at him owlishly.

“England - we must return.” Strange’s voice is strained as if he has to push the words past something within him and the effort is very taxing.

The Abbey within the Darkness moves as the Pillar of Night dictates - it is possible to move it purposefully, but it costs the caster a good deal of vitality. “You know how arduous it is to move Hurtfew by will over such great distances - and we are a great deal further away from England than Venice is. I am not certain such a thing has ever been attempted.”

“Then I shall be the first,” Strange grinds out flatly, his words coming like salt from a mill.

Norrell is bewildered. “What is there of a sudden in England, sir, that generates a need for such action?”

The book Strange is skimming over displeases him: he casts it to the floor and grabs another. “There can be no delay - I must return at once.” He paces about the table: a predator - knowledge his prey.

“Mr Strange,” Norrell says reasonably as he goes to the fallen book and picks it up as if it’s a bird that has tumbled from its nest. “I am not at all certain it is possible in our present state and place. Indeed sir, I do not believe it can be done. The King’s Roads do not stretch as far as Agrace, and it would still be a _devil_ of a journey if they did!” He looks at Strange to see if the other magician appreciates the humour in his phrasing - Agrace being situated on the far side of Hell. He is disappointed to realize the words are barely acknowledged.

(It has been noted that Mr Norrell is a gentleman who would not know a joke if it came up to him and shook him by the hand. This is still broadly true, however he voices very occasional and scholarly _bon mots_ that only he finds any entertainment in.)

Still perplexed and more than a little unhappy, Mr Norrell returns to his bedchamber. There is no danger of Strange completing the magic by morning, indeed there is (he thinks) very little danger of Strange completing the magic at all. Move the Darkness from Agrace to England? It simply cannot be done. He does not understand why Strange is attempting it, nor does he understand the wildness that seems to grip the second magician. He cannot account for where it might have come from, and this troubles him a good deal. He wonders if it is a snarl in the magic the rain did not wash away when it transformed the Darkness from Executioner to mere Gaoler. Or perhaps it is a remnant left over from whatever disastrous and foolhardy magics Strange attempted in Venice.

 **9th November 1817**  
_This will fare very ill,_ Norrel writes in his daybook. _I do not quite know how to limit him._

He stares at what he has written for a long time, as if the act of writing his fear can still it, or owning his ignorance can relieve it. It does neither.

All things taken within consideration, it is lucky for Jonathan Strange that he does not know how to move Hurtfew from the marchlands of Agrace; although it is not a fortune he appreciates. If he possessed the correct spell, the magic would allow little splinters of the Darkness to take root in his heart and his mind like two small black worms - and every day they would gnaw away at their new habitat. Within a season he would feel sickly and absent-minded, within two he would be unable to do magic, within three he would forget his own name and take to his bed, and within a year he would die.

Strange knows nothing of this however, so he does not see the futility of his actions - although, from what we know of his character, it is likely that even if Strange did know it would have made no difference at all to his activities.

He studies all night. He sleeps very briefly, slumped over the books on the table, smudging ink on his shirtsleeves. On the morrow he wakes, sore and miserable. He drinks the rest of the brandy in the decanter: it seems to help. Once he starts he finds himself reluctant to stop. Imbibing allows him to concentrate on the spell whilst at the same time fogging his mind against the particulars of why he is seeking out such magic in the first place. He needs the brandy because without it, he sees little white-furred bodies with pale grey dust-speckled wings every time he closes his eyes. He sees Arabella, hunched and stricken, hugging her shawl about her and silently weeping. Neither image will quit his head: it as if they have both been painted on the inside of his eyelids. 

**10th November**  
_Brandy - three bottles._  
**11th November**  
_Wine - three bottles._

These are the notes Norrell leaves in his daybook, frowning at the quill in his hand as if it has displeased him.

By the end of the third day, Strange thinks he has the shape of the formula. He has not eaten and neither has he slept again, but he has consumed several bottles of brandy and several more of oak-leaf wine. The faery vintage is usually a delight to him, it smells faintly of sherbet and tastes a little like crisp Conference pears. Now it might as well be water or vinegar for all the notice he takes of it, pouring it down his throat in an attempt to drown the misery dwelling inside him. 

Somewhen in the night (a little past 3am as a clock would mark it) the world slips away from Strange. Even a magician set to his purpose must sleep eventually. 

Norrell finds him in the morning, still unconscious, sprawled amidst books, split quills, splattered ink and empty bottles. Absently the older magician closes some of the books and stacks them in a pile on the table. Likewise he gathers stray papers that have fluttered to the floor; whilst he is there he tidies Strange’s long legs under the table too. Norrell reads the pages and his brow furrows. He carefully pulls out the papers from beneath the cradle of Strange’s arms as his head rests on the table. These final pages he likes even less: his eyebrows slant down so sternly it is a wonder he can read at all. He shakes his head. “No, this will not do,” he murmurs. “This will not do at all.” 

Mr Norrell is a cautious man by nature and has a tendency to dislike new or radical things: as a consequence he has frowned at a good many things that the average person should not waste the time to even acknowledge. But in this instance, Mr Norrell’s concerns are valid and pressing: it is impossible to tell the exact side-effects of the magic Strange’s notes describe, but Norrell is able to discern plainly they would be very strenuous for the caster - indeed they might well kill him. Mr Norrell is not big-hearted by nature; many individuals have commented how they find him to be a very dusty, peevish and irritable man. But the few things he loves he loves with all of his small and owl-ish heart: it is inconceivable to him that he should allow Strange to do such a dangerous piece of magic. 

He places the pages of notes in the grate of the large fireplace and watches as the flames (tinged with turquoise) devour them. For good measure he takes up the poker and nudges the ash until it crumbles. Satisfied, he replaces the poker and returns to his former pupil. For a moment he closes his eyes: one hand makes a small and complicated gesture, the other touches Strange on the shoulder. Norrells’s lips move as he recites something almost silently. There is a flicker in the air; all the shadows within the room for an instant face the other way. When they have righted themselves, Strange and Norrell have vanished. 

They reappear in the Ash Tree bedchamber - which is Strange’s. The magic has been obliging enough to land Strange upon the bed, although he groans and half-wakes with the impact. Norrell snatches up a neckcloth that is hanging over a chair and loops it very inexpertly about Strange’s ankle and the bedpost. 

The younger magician struggles to rise, groggy, his head sore but for some moments blissfully empty: when memory and misery return they do it so suddenly they knock the breath from him in a huff. He runs his hand through his hair, trying to brush it back from his eyes. He is uncertain why Norrell is standing beside his bed. “What is it?” His voice sounds raw and uneven.

“I cannot allow you to do it.”

“What?”

“The magic. I cannot let you do it.”

Somewhere deep within the crater of pain, anger is boiling up. “I’ll do any magic I damn well please,” Strange growls, all but flinging himself off the bed. Norrell hastens back a step, but he needn’t have bothered. Something is caught about Strange’s ankle: it snaps tight and stops him so violently that he pitches to the floor.

“What the devil?” Wildly Strange is looking about him - he cannot miss the cord that is knotted about his left ankle and the bedpost. The tether is a peculiar thing: it is almost as thick as his wrist and deep indigo in colour. It looks to be made of numerous skeins of silk woven around a neckcloth. He pulls upon it pugnaciously with his leg, seeking to snap it or shake it off. He looks up at Norrell. “What have you done?” There is a note in his voice, nine parts wonder to one part hate.

“I cannot let you…”

“Release me, sir, this instant!” Strange bellows and snakes out a hand to grab Norrell and force him.

Norrell, startled, manages to skip out of the way by a whisker and backs to the door.

Dishevelled and in his wild and lowly position on the floorboards Strange is every inch the madman. Anger and misery combine into something caustic that burns his throat. “You meddlesome old bastard!” he roars, trying to spit the poisonous feelings out.

Norrell is outside the door now, fingers tracing a pattern upon the latch. There is a light like fireflies for an instant before the door to Ash Tree closes and the magic locks it as securely as a castle.

“No - no! Come back here! Norrell! You bastard - _Norrell!”_

The two spells Norrell performed were Carlyle’s _End and Hindrance,_ and Hellingly’s _Ward of Forlorn Hope._ (The name is a mistranslation from the Dutch _‘verloren hoop’.)_ Carlyle has proven time and again to be ineffectual against people: Norrell made it work by casting it not upon Strange directly, but upon the neckcloth. Hellingly’s _Ward_ was well known to the Aureate magicians who used it to protect abbeys, keeps and castles - it is notoriously hard to break.

Norrell leaves Strange locked in his own room and raging for the rest of the day, but visits him the following morning, bringing with him a plate of toast and eggs and a pot of tea. He finds Strange sitting on the floor beside the bed, a bottle in one hand and another uncorked beside him, both summoned up from the cellar. A glass is full, but the younger magician appears to have forgotten about it and resorts instead to swigging from the bottle in a ragged manner. Norrell has never seen him behave so uncouthly and is a little shocked by it. 

Shadow-green eyes flicker lazily up to meet Norrell’s startled blue ones. Strange takes another pull on the brandy as if it is insult and challenge combined and he would have it out with the bottle. “It died,” he slurs, addressing the bottle with a little shake. “Don’t even know which it was. And now it’s dead.” He rocks the bottle ponderously on its base; his lips are curled up in one corner in a look of disgust - although for what or whom is impossible to say. “Why was it moths do you suppose? Damned inconvenient - moth corpses are no good at all…” He does not appear to expect an answer, and the bottle gives him none. “No good at all,” he repeats quietly.

Unsettled, Norrell places the breakfast tray upon the bed and leaves again.


	2. Chapter 2

By the third day, Strange has broken the tether of Carlyle’s _End_ and has quite the collection of empty bottles around him. Hellingly’s _Ward_ holds fast, so he is confined to his chamber still. He writes in his daybook, trying to recreate the notes he made in the library, trying to remember and retrace the feel of the spell. It is infuriatingly elusive - on the very tip of his brain. He curses (proficiently and prolifically) in Spanish, a language that seems to him made for precisely that purpose. The words have a vicious weight to them, like flung sods of earth containing hidden stones. He summons up mead and claret from Hurtfew’s cellars.

It occurs to him, once he has returned to England and Arabella, he will need to reverse time: to transform the moths back into a baby and then bring the little thing back to life. It would be easiest of course if he has the moth-corpses, but there is no guarantee that Arabella has kept them. Would a woman whose child died and turned into moths keep the insect bodies? Would she bury them? 

Indeed, one might lacquer them and wear them as a necklace for all Strange knows. The circumstance is so far outside his understanding he cannot begin to imagine what Arabella has done with the moths, and thinking on it makes him feel a little sick and rub at his sternum because there is something sharp and uncomfortable lodged behind his ribs like a dart and he cannot make it stop aching. (The ache, incidentally, is like tooth ache. That is to say, the phrase is innocuous enough, but the sensation itself is torment.)

**16th November**  
_There is not enough in the cellar to keep this up._

That sentence does not convey the feelings troubling Gilbert Norrell, First Magician of the Modern Age. Those feelings are fear and frustration and a great deal of sadness. He does not waste the ink upon them however, for what good would it do? He is not a woman or a poet and so would receive no satisfaction from recording his emotions as more over-sensitive individuals might. He is a gentleman and a scholar: his emotions have no bearing upon the matter at hand. How he fells about it is immaterial - the question is how he ought act.

Mr Norrell, it has been correctly understood, is not always an astute judge of character, which is why he allowed himself to be guided by Lascelles and Drawlight for so many years. But just because this gentleman cannot intuit the motives of others, is not to say that he does not understand Mr Strange tolerably well - because he does. 

Norrell knows that Strange can be distractible - flighty even: that is why he marks it when Strange tacks his notice and determination upon something. And for a man who can be so vague and lazy when the mood takes him, that determination is fearsome to behold - it is hot iron, full of strength and sparks and capable of becoming anything it chooses. Similarly, Norrell knows that Strange - being a younger man than he - is prone to impetuousness and an occasional unevenness of temper. This is why Norrell does not worry so much when Strange is shouting, brim-full of ire - he worries exceedingly so when Strange is silent. For Strange’s temper to have cooled and set is disastrous indeed - it means he is thinking. And whilst he will never be as analytical or precise as Norrell, that does not mean he cannot be just as powerful or more devious. 

In preparation of the fact that Strange will find some way to undermine Hellingly’s _Ward,_ Norrell employs a deviousness of his own. He will deny it to his last breath, if any ask, as his actions are not those of a gentleman… But there is no one - not even Childermass - to comment upon Norrell’s actions within Hurtfew’s darkness, so he does not trouble himself. 

Norrell prepares a batch of Cadfael’s _Paregoric._ (Cadfael was a twelfth century monk who was both a theoretical and minor practical magician. The Shrewsbury Benedictine had an extensive knowledge of herbs and botany: as a result all the magics he cast or wrote about always relied upon a certain plant as their key element.)

 _Paregoric_ is a charm that uses wyst and valerian-by-moonlight to enchant a vial of water. Once enchanted the water becomes a sleeping draft of sorts. Its effects are not entirely regular: it might dull pain, bring calm, or cause sleep within any individual who imbibes it (but there is no way to tell which will transpire beforehand.) Mr Norrell reasons that any or all of these states would be beneficial to Mr Strange, so he performs the spell and then translocates the liquid into a bottle of mead within Hurtfew’s cellar. A second spell of Lanchester’s _Lachesis Moirai_ ensures that the mead will be the next bottle summoned to Strange’s room.

Strange sleeps for nearly three days. 

He dreams that he meets Arabella at Starecross Hall: she has with her a shawl that is blue tinged with mauve and grey. She does not wear it, but carries it bundled in her arms. At last he is moved to ask her why she carries it, for the colour is most disagreeable and makes him think of wreathes and weeping.

Arabella sits down and unfolds the shawl in the crook of her lap: inside are thirteen moths, each about the size of her hand. Their eyes are emerald jewels, their wings lace the colour of moonlight and their bodies are adorned with fur and soft feathery antennae. 

He has never considered the creatures before, but now as he observes them he thinks them very fine, and so asks Arabella, “What are their names?”

“Lost Hope, Pity Me, Agrace, Great Tom, Petty Egypt, Asmody’s Citadel, Serlo’s Blessing, Auberon, Fearfulness, Arrogance, Thistledown, Darkness…” As she names them the moths ponderously fly up and turn into nothing but starlight. Belle pauses and gazes at the final one, keen to name this one most of all yet reluctant to have it fly away too. “And Kitty,” she says at last. “Katherine really, but Kitty for everyday. I think the name most endearing - don’t you?”

“Kitty. She is very beautiful,” Strange finds himself saying, although if he thought about it he would have considered that a very odd thing to say about a moth. But he does not consider it - no one ever does in dreams. 

The last moth flies away becoming the suggestion of moonbeams between tree branches. Strange finds himself alone at Starecross, which displeases him since something about the moths, or perhaps the odd coloured shawl - or maybe the name Kitty - strikes a very lonely and unpleasant chord within him. He would like very much to embrace Arabella and rest his nose and chin on the crown of her head and breathe in the slight scent of lavender and honeysuckle that her hair always has. He searches the house - every room within it and a good many he is certain have no business being in Starecross at all - but he cannot find Belle again. He can however hear someone softly sobbing in the room next door. 

When he wakes his eyes are red and itch with salt.

Strange has no notion that he slept for so long, so it does not factor into his thoughts. He renews his workings against the ward between drinking brandy and pondering on the name Kitty. He does not know why such a name should be in his head, nor why the shape of it is so desirable and painful both at once. He supposes he must have dreamt or read something about a girl with that name who came to a bad end. It doesn’t matter - all that matters is breaking the ward so he can return to the library and his notes, then work the spell and move the Darkness to return to England. Then he may hold Belle in his arms whilst they both mourn and console each other for all that life and magic has given with the right hand and stolen away with the left. 

It takes him just over twelve hours of exhaustive trial and error, but he succeeds in the end: Hellingly’s spell lies rent and broken like the remains of a dew-hung cobweb. His immediate thought is of the library, but his second thought holds more subtlety. First he hexes the wood and stone of Hurtfew so that they refuse any future casting of the ward. (A lone, quiet thought ponders if this is wise, but it is paid no attention by the rest of his brain.) Secondly, he remains in his bedchamber. For as long as Norrell believes him bound, he reasons, Norrell will make no further move against him and so inadvertently allow him greater peace and latitude to achieve his goals. 

Strange summons up books to his room along with bottles of hawthorn claret from the cellars. (But not mead - never mead, he thinks - he has quite gone off mead.) 

His pain has drowned the anger he felt towards the world and towards Norrell for confining him: it has frozen his rage into something cold and sharp and crystalline. From this desolate and icy place, Jonathan Strange is capable of intricate subtleties, and he employs them all. He calls up books and leaves a shadow suggestion of the volume in their place, masking his theft. He resurrects the ashes of his notes and interrogates them. He sets a skerrik of doubt around the papers he takes, so should any wonder if one is missing they will immediately second-guess themselves.

It is as well for Strange that Norrell can be cunning too, and nothing forces him to be more so than Strange. He does not have Strange’s raw talent for improvisation, but forty years of reading about other magician’s imaginations and charms stands him in perfectly good stead. He knows what Strange is about before the other magician has murmured his second summoning: he sets a labyrinth upon the papers and many of the books so Strange will find himself endlessly summoning only the first two or three and never the entire portfolio he requires. 

(This is an excellent idea of Mr Norrell’s and should have had a far greater impact on curbing Strange’s attempts at spell-work than it does. Alas, when the covert summonings do not yield the results he seeks, Strange grows tired of the whole thing and gives up on subtlety altogether.) The younger magician leaves his room and strides into the library: he speaks three words and the room becomes his own, wrapping about him like a cloak.

Norrell is in the drawing room, re-reading Strange’s revised version of _The History of English Magic._ (Unlike the first volume, this book has not had the benefit of an editor and publisher to smooth out the creases within its narrative form.) As a pursuit of leisure, Norrell enjoys nothing more than to sit by the fire and work his way through the new version of Strange’s book (bound, somewhat appropriately, in starling feathers) and make corrections, suggestions or footnotes on little slips of paper or about the margins in green ink. 

(Strange’s original work is the most beautiful book of magic his old tutor has ever read: whilst he disapproves of Strange’s unorthodox nature, he at least recognizes that is the primary reason he finds it so attractive. The organic and unformed nature of Strange’s scholarship is like an English wood, and Norrell, much to his own surprise, finds that having spent all his life in a fiercely regimented and cultivated garden, he appreciates and occasionally yearns for the unfettered naturalness that a wood may provide, offering up bluebells and wild garlic one season, snowdrops or blackberries the next according to its whim.)

Norrell hears Strange’s step upon the stairs, but by the time he has marked his place and gained his feet, the door to the library is closed. By the time Norrell reaches it, the door will not open (apart from thrice during Norrell’s frenzied rattlings and workings upon it when it opens into a blank space that is nowhere at all and causes him to swiftly slam it closed again.) Norrell does not know precisely what magic Strange has employed (neither in all honesty does Strange - the shape of the spell merely suggested itself to him, almost as if the library asked _-Shall I be your cloak sir?-_ and Strange said yes.)

Norrell employs a _chimera_ \- a word that in this instance describes the amalgamation of two or more spells into one - to unwrap the library from about Strange. It is a mix of Ormskirk, De Chepe and Iquelrius. (The latter is a vagabond magician no better than a _cowen_ who lived in Norfolk in the 1300s. His spells always seemed to Norrell no more than nursery rhymes and nonsense, and this is the first time he has ever bothered to use one. He is surprised to find it accomplishes its task tolerably well.)

Strange is at the hexagonal table surrounded by a drift of books: many have been pulled from their shelves and if they do not please him cast haphazardly upon the floor. Others have been left open on the table in heaps and piles, spilling over one another. The grand candelabra that hangs from the vaulted ceiling is alight not with candles but with aetherlings: an entire _pyram_ of them curl and drift amongst the cinnamon bark and wyst - they are attracted by the scent of potential magic as much as the spices woven around the candelabra. Their glow is the yellow-white hue of lightning and candle flames - and brighter than both. The library is better illuminated than it has ever been beneath the pale sun in Yorkshire.

Mr Norrell finds himself rather pitched into the library when his spells unexpectedly break through the weave, his feet stutter and he nearly trips, catching himself upon the stone archway. He is reminded of some months ago when he traversed the broken labyrinth to find Strange sitting in his library; now as then the younger magician has thoughts only for the books before him and not for his former tutor at all. 

Norrell has never been in love with anything more complex than a book and always avoided the usual connections and friendships with his fellow man in favour of study and more books. (And an astute person may surmise it is quite purposeful upon his part - Norrell does not like strong emotion - it discombobulates him.) Because of this, he has never experienced true rage, or grief, or sorrow. On occasion he grows cross or unhappy or generally out of sorts but this is not the same by any stretch of the imagination. Hence, Norrell always finds it very difficult to understand the tumult of emotion that can descend upon individuals. Being ignorant of the cause of Strange’s distress, he is at a loss to understand the other magician’s behaviour, and he cannot therefore think of words to persuade, calm or console him. As usual he is left as he always is: reliant upon imperfect communication and magic.

Strange’s mind has been so far distracted that he does not entirely comprehend that the library is like his own cloak or a personal snail shell - a thing worn by and attending to him and him alone. This means that he does not much comprehend when Norrell undoes the magic: he simply looks up from his books and is annoyed to see the other magician within his field of vision. “Do go away,” he comments absently, pouring himself another glass of something and then swigging from the bottle since it is already within his hand.

“Mr Strange…” Norrell’s voice is soft and hesitant; no one who has ever met him would imagine he could gentle his voice so, but he does. “Mr Strange sir, what is it that moves you to attempt this magic? It is an ill casting and nothing good will come of it no matter how it is refined.” Norrell pauses and looks studiously at nothing in particular. “There are some spells, sir, that are of false benefit - they promise much and deliver nothing of value. Indeed, the only things they are capable of delivering are harm and disappointment.”

Strange does not attend him - or if he does he betrays no outward sign of it. His gaze appears affixed upon a copper candlestick with pewter scroll-work. The candlestick is old and one of two - Norrell recalls they belonged to a great uncle and were originally clad in silver plate. Diligent polishing has worn the thin plate off and they have long since been relegated to the lower halls of Hurtfew for as far back as Norrell can remember. None the less Strange has a fondness for them: he put them in the Ash Tree room, and now he has brought both candlesticks down with him to the library, despite the fact the aetherlings are so bright he has no need of candles at all.

“I will take us back to England, where you may lecture to your heart’s delight.” Strange tosses the comment over his shoulder. It is a derisive line, both showing his demented resolve and his utter disregard for Norrell whom he does not break his studies to address properly.

Norrell had expected oaths: he is glad to work with civil sentences. “I do not think that can be done sir,” he chides.

“I don’t give a damn what you think,” Strange spits flatly.

Norrell blinks at Strange’s back, at the laces that cinch his crumpled waistcoat. “I see you are set to a purpose,” he notes cautiously. “But I do not believe you have thought it through.”

“Through?” Strange glances briefly back at him. “What is there to think through?”

“The spell sir. I have seen your notes…”

“You burnt my notes,” Strange corrects.

“And I think them problematic.”

Strange pivots away from the table upon one foot to look at him at last. “Problematic?” he echoes. “Why on earth should you find them such?” He emphasises the word ‘you’ very slightly. “It is not your spell.”

“It is not,” Norrell agrees. “I do not think however you have taken into consideration all you might.”

“Damn your consideration!”

Norrell is silent for some time. “It is as I feared,” he acknowledges at last.

“And what precisely do you fear, out of your monumental list of options?” Strange asks nastily.

“The lengths that I must go to,” Norrell replies humbly and truthfully as he casts _The Order of Reflected Silence_ \- a spell based on a passage in Belasis.

Strange tries to continue with his magics, but finds himself choking on something at the back of his throat. He coughs and hacks up a slender blindworm onto the floor. He glares at it, his mind working furiously, before he snatches it up and brandishes it towards Norrell. “A muffling spell?” he demands. “Is it to be toads and vipers then?”

“Easier on the throat than diamonds and rubies,” Norrell mutters defensively. The spell is a very old one: instead of certain words the afflicted party was blessed (or cursed) to choke up frogs and snakes or precious stones. Whilst speaking diamonds and rubies sounds an auspicious fate, it is not: those afflicted either die before the year is out or take a vow of silence. Those who cough up amphibians have been known to live very long lives. Norrell instructed the enchantment to prevent Mr Strange from speaking any words of magic.

Strange looks at the little lizard in his fist, his eyes rake up and down its length, tracing every scale. “Ah,” he murmurs at last. “There you are.” A gesture and the creature becomes leaves of cress which wither and die. Strange glances towards Norrell, treating him to a very contemptuous look. “Were I you, I should not bother to cast that again.”

Surreptitiously, Norrell tries. Strange sneezes and of a sudden a snake and two frogs are writhing and roasting in the fire. Norrell tries again with the same results. 

“Are we entertaining the French?” Strange asks unkindly.

Norrell looks at his own hands, clasped before him. “No,” he says at length. “No sir, we are not.” A moment or two more he passes by looking uncomfortable and rubbing one of his thumbs nervously across his knuckles, then he quits the library. 

Strange barely marks his leaving, he has other important things to think on. A more pertinent magician might have benefited from questioning what Norrell was about, but Strange’s attention is blinkered to the matter at hand and so he misses the instance where he might have stopped his old tutor’s actions.


	3. Chapter 3

The spell Norrell prepares is an obscure but very ancient one; Sutton-Grove renames it _The Danish Nutshell_ (an allusion to Hamlet - “Oh God - I could be bound within a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…”) It is a variation of the binding the Old Man of the White Tower placed upon the would-be-assassin Broc, as well as the pistol and the lead shot the unfortunate faery employed. It is technically a labyrinth, but one woven in time, fate and minute threads, instead of corridors. The fact that (theoretically) it can be broken is an added spice of pique to the prisoner’s misery.

The casting requires a piece of cloth, nine nails and a cone of salt: the larger the cloth, the more efficiently the spell will take hold and the harder it will be to break. Mr Norrell is some time finding the nails, but in the process he discovers the linen press and so is able to take a bed sheet - a far more effective piece of material than the handkerchief he had been going to use.

Norrell ponders for some time what room is best to confine Strange in, since once the spell is complete the room will not open again until the magic is disbursed. He decides on the pantry: it is small for a room (although very large for a pantry). It is plain and windowless and chill, so Mr Strange will not like to be kept there. It is also stocked with items like pickles, a wheel of cheese, cured ham and preserves, which means Strange will be in no danger of starving. Norrell places a skimmer in the labyrinth, a loophole of sorts that will allow Strange to summon bottles from the cellar and candles from the chest in the hall. Mr Norrell hopes that this austere setting will lead Strange to consider his ways and quickly mend them. He holds the form of the spell in his mind and pours the salt over the bed sheet threaded through with nails.

In the blink of an eye, Strange has vanished from the well-lit library, and reappeared in a small cold somewhere in total darkness. He turns, steps forward and barks up against a shelf full of preserves and pickles. He does not require three guesses as to who has plucked him out of the library. He casts Atherton’s _Lumin_ like a curse: as the sunset-hued light rises, Strange starts to curse in earnest. He is in the pantry - and there is no door, just a blank space of wall where the door ought to be. _“Me cago en la hostia! Cabron - hijo de mil putas!”_ He kicks the wall and strikes at it with his fists. It is made of stone like the rest of the abbey, old and smoothed by time and not a barrier any man could break in a hundred years. _“Que te folle un pez! … Pollas en vinagre.”_

The older magician does not feel triumph or pleasure in the magic, although in truth it has been very neatly done. All he feels is a kind of soul-weariness twinned with the hope that Strange will come to his senses in an hour or two. After all, Norrell cannot keep him locked in the pantry forever - that would be preposterous! Faintly, he can hear Strange shouting, although he is thankfully ignorant of what the Second Greatest Magician of the Modern Age is actually saying. He imagines it must be unparliamentary in the extreme.

There is a jam-stained letter on the kitchen table from Henri Brioche when Norrell goes there to make himself tea.

_“Greetings oh Blankets! I am alarmed! You have not taken your fare as is customary! There were scones that I was forced to eat myself least they go stale. Have I offended you, oh Blankets, that you now scorn this scone-filled and most humble chef? Was it the celery? You have my sincere apologies oh Blankets, it was Mr Goodgentleman’s fault, he makes much mischief when let into my kitchen. How may I wend my way back into your beneficent graces? Would you care for cake, perhaps?”_

Mr Norrell does not know why Henri is so accommodating and apologetic, nor why he refers to them as ‘oh Blankets’. He wonders if perhaps it is an obscure and outmoded term of respect for a magician. This does not seem very likely, but he cannot for the life of him fathom any other reason for Henri’s form of address.

When the tea has brewed (a brief interlude, Norrell does not care for his tea to be over-strong) Norrell pens a reply to Henri, mentioning vaguely that _‘Merlin is currently indisposed’_ and adding that he has _‘little interest in sustenance at the present’._

Henri Brioche sends a small milk-white bottle with a long neck the curve of which suggests a water-fowl of some sort. _“Greetings oh Blankets!”_ his note begins as usual. _“Sorry to hear of your troubles - was there cheese involved? (My dear friend Seedbox still has scars.) This is…”_ a Sidhe word which looks a bit like ‘poppy’, _“tincture. It is far better than…”_ there follows a string of Sidhe words which appear nonsensical but might conceivably translate as ‘Foppy, Uoppy, Loppy, Thoppy, Aoppy, Roppy and Koppy’. (Mr Norrell does not attend to this nonsense, and so does not realize that the worlds begin with the first seven letters of the Fulthark.) _“My friend Seedbox benefitted from it greatly during his convalescence!”_ Henri Brioche ends by saying the tincture is stronger than a thousand swans and ought be used sparingly. 

Mr Norrell is not certain exactly how strong a thousand swans are, besides which it seems a most peculiar unit by which to measure a tincture’s potency. He decides to treat it like a concentrated form of morphia: he meticulously adds two of the smallest drops to a bottle of oakleaf wine, and as before, fate-locks it to be the next bottle to appear at Strange’s side.

The younger magician’s rage has left him. There is only so long a man may strike his fists against stone and there are only so many jars of preserve upon a shelf to throw. Strange has exhausted both activities. 

For a time he broods and imagines exactly how he will pay Norrell back for this treatment. But all roads of thought eventually lead back to the wound in his heart and his longing to embrace Arabella. Being magically locked within a pantry is a great inconvenience, but it is one he will have to overcome if he is to work on his half-formed spell to move the Darkness and hence return to England and his wife. 

He summons wine from the cellar, both faintly amused and annoyed that Norrell has left room within the enchantment to permit him. How _perfectly_ considerate. 

He has no quill or paper and none appear when he tries to call them. He discovers a slate nailed on the side of a wide set of shelves. It is a tally-list of all the jams and mustards, pickles and potted meats in the pantry. There is a stick of chalk on the shelf beside it. Strange wipes the slate briskly clean with his sleeve and perches on a little three-legged stool that was used by the maids when they needed to reach jars from the higher shelves. 

He must look faintly ridiculous he supposes - as if he’s been sent back to school (although, a pantry would certainly be a counterproductive prison for a young boy.) It doesn’t matter. He opens a bottle of oakleaf wine and starts to make notes on the slate. Half an hour later he has abandoned the slate and is using the wall to write on instead - it is a far bigger canvas, even if parts of it are stained with chutney. He takes a swallow of wine and glances over his notes. He frowns and tries to read the line again, but the letters do not quite look like letters any more - and they undulate as if they were floating on the wall. “You’re not a mill pond,” he tells the stones crossly. “Stop that at once.” He blinks stupidly at the not-letters and rubs at his brow: the thread of his attention is unravelling with alarming rapidity. 

Also the wine bottle is laughing at him. 

He looks at it, but it is as if he is seeing the world through the wrong end of a field-glass - everything is stretched and far away. The bottle slips from his fingers to crack upon the flagstones. For a second Jonathan Strange looks at the growing lake of wine… And then it unexpectedly rushes up to meet him.

Strange sleeps for six days straight. He does not dream, he does not move; he lies on his side exactly as he did when he first fell: his stockings and the knee of his breeches soaked from their too-close acquaintance with the wine puddle. The chalk lies half in, half out of his hand - broken. His cheek is very close to the corner of a cupboard that almost struck his head when he fell.

Norrell summons a vision of Strange in his silver dish. He is a little alarmed the next day to find the vision exactly the same. On the morning of the third day, he is certain that Strange is dead. He berates himself and Henri Brioche and Strange roundly, laments vociferously about the capricious spitefulness of faeries as a race, and of Childermass’ thoughtlessness for not being at Hurtfew when he is sorely needed. Mr Norrell hunches awkwardly over the moon-ish light of the silver dish, trying to catch sight of the faint rising and falling of Strange’s breast. It is there, but it takes him a long time to see it and longer still to double and treble check again it in case he might be mistaken. 

Norrell finds he is unable to concentrate on anything as his thoughts always wander towards Strange and an ever-growing store of worry. It is odd, he thinks, that his former pupil should frustrate him more so when he is unconscious than he ever did when awake. Mr Norrell sits in the kitchen, the silver dish before him on the table, the vision in the water that of Strange, curled awkwardly in the darkness on the flagstones of the pantry.

When Strange wakes and recasts _Lumin_ on the sixth day, Norrell is so surprised and elated that he jumps to his feet, knocking over his teacup. He peers at the water avidly, drinking in the sight of Strange, groggily sitting up and leaning awkwardly against a set of shelves. The younger magician seems a little confused and annoyed; he rubs his thumb across his fingernails - they patently bother him. After some moments Strange looks up - directly at Norrell from the spell-lit water. His lips twitch in a sorry approximation of their usual ironic tilt: he waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. Immediately the image on the water goes black, and no matter what Norrell tries, he cannot recall it. Norrell spends the rest of that day and the next listening to the occasional oaths, long deep silences and instances of frenzied crashing that come from the pantry. He has no idea what Strange is up to, as no spell of sight or revelation he attempts will work: the younger magician has shrouded himself. Norrell is left to fret and guess at what the sounds of splintering wood or shattering pottery can mean.

 **30th November**  
_I do not think the pantry will last,_ he confides within the quiet pages of his daybook.

The next morning when Norrell comes down for breakfast, he finds a disheveled Strange in the corridor between the pantry and the kitchen. He is sitting propped up against the wall, drooping towards the floor, his long legs cluttering up the passageway. Norrell stares at him for a small eternity, unable to comprehend or believe that he has really undone the _Danish Nutshell._ Such a thing is unheard of.

Strange’s eyes are the greenish colour of a deepening bruise; they rest upon Norrell briefly before falling away again. His look is that of a basilisk: a cold stone stare trying to palm that petrification off onto someone else. “You are unspeakable, sir,” he grates. “And so you will not speak to me again.” With that he pulls himself unsteadily to his feet and lurches past Norrell towards the staircase and the sanctuary of his room - he is too battered about the brain to countenance the library.

“Mr Strange - _Jonathan…!”_

Norrell’s calls are ignored entirely. He wants to ask how Strange traversed the weave of the _Danish Nutshell_ \- such a thing should have taken four hundred years to unpick - how on earth had the man succeeded in scarcely three days? He wanted to congratulate him - surely such a thing had never been managed before - it was a remarkable achievement! Norrell’s excitement was such that it bypassed the minor facts of who had cast the spell and why in the first place. His elation was so boundless it did not truly occur to him how loathsome he might be in the other magician’s eyes at that moment until he heard the door of the Ash Tree room slam shut with the finality of an angel’s trumpet on Judgment Day.

 **1st December**  
_Men are often characterised,_ Norrell scribed, _by features of the landscape: one may say ‘he is dependable as an oak’ or ‘he is as old as the hills’ - even ‘he is as bonny as a wheat sheaf’._

_It does not serve to describe Strange in this sort of way, for I have come to conclude he is not of the land at all and one should not view him as such. His character is entirely of the sea._

_He is pleasant smiles, like sunlight on balmy bays. He is hidden and unexpected, like caves that reveal or submerge themselves with the tide. He is deeper than you might believe, for one still young and relatively untrained. He has horizons beyond the one that first meets the eye. He has storms and may lash himself to madness or destruction upon the sharp rocks of a lonely promontory. One cannot placate him during such times any more than sailors may soothe the ocean. One must learn to be rocked and buffeted by his moods or as drowned by them as he is._

_I have always sensed the fault-line of wildness within him - I had hoped that study and knowledge would quiet it and smooth its ragged edges so it no longer troubled him. Time I entrusted too with this task. They have not been as diligent as I might have hoped. (In part I blame the disorder that came upon him in Venice. He indulged in tinctures and charms of the most questionable sort, no better than a would-be poet.)_

_Since Venice I have feared Strange’s ambition: it forces him to the worst of places and I do not know how he may be called back to himself. Perhaps his wife might know; it is my understanding that females have a degree of influence in these spheres… But she is in Venice or England and not easily called upon._

_It pains me to be so at odds with him. I have no idea how this mood came about but it has been a source of turmoil and contention ever since he first declared his intent to return to England. He does not understand - the faerytales of enchanted persons whose feet do not touch the ground, and when they finally do so crumble to dust - those are not true tales but allegories. Magic is very great, but when used incorrectly it can destroy. Just because a thing might be done does not mean it should. He does not comprehend this - and I fear very much it will kill him._

Norrell writes that before he sleeps, by the glow of a single candle that playfully threatens to set the bed-curtains alight any time there is a breeze. In the morning he lights the fire in the grate with a word (the flames are tinged pale blue at their tips) and the candles set on his side table with a flick of one finger. It is a frivolous use of magic, lighting candles this way, but he never understood how tiresome endlessly striking sparks from a flint and steel was until the Darkness swallowed Hurtfew. 

By the light of the triple candelabra and the hearth, he reads what he wrote the night before. When he gets up, before he washes and dresses, he tears out the page that stands for the first of December and casts it into the hearth. He writes instead two sentences on the next page.

**1st December**  
_He was stretched upon the flagstones this morning having escaped the salt, iron and pantry, although the effort has cost him very dear. Why is he always so foolish as to batter himself against walls that should not be broken?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) If references to Henri Brioche, Seedbox and Mr Goodgentleman do not register as the somewhat flimsy joke they are, I urge you to listen to 'Bleak Expectations'. It's wonderfully silly, very funny and entirely worth your while.
> 
> 2) I've had oak leaf wine. Yes, it's made from fermented oak leaves. It's *really* damn tasty.


	4. Chapter 4

Strange does not join Norrell at breakfast, nor does he come down to the library or drawing room for afternoon tea. The aetherlings that have been curled about the library candelabra all disperse and find better places to nest. The shadows do not turn, the air does not fizz and the left side of Mr Norrell’s elbow does not itch: by these signs he understands that whatever Strange is doing in his room it is not magic.

It would have surprised Norrell to learn that Strange is doing very little. Mostly he is sitting upon the edge of his bed, gazing out of the large window at the storm-black sky that is the only horizon he ever sees within the Darkness. Sometimes he looks at his hands, his fingers twining against one another and twisting his mourning ring, the cold of it a constant counter-point to his endless stutter of meaningless, uncast gestures. Sometimes he looks at the little silver and mahogany framed shaving mirror upon his bureaux: the glass is fractured like a spider’s web from when he punched it - although his knuckles healed fast enough. He has, for the past decade believed magic capable of anything. Magic has been his passion, his goal, his art. Now he looks at the broken mirror, and the darkness that boils endlessly around Hurtfew, and he wonders at last what magic has actually gained him.

He imagines Norrell voicing such sentiments as a prelude to a very long and rather dull lecture.

“You tell me these things sir,” Strange admonishes the empty room, “as if I am not sensible of them and do not own them… Well sir, I do,” he says tiredly. “Believe me I do.” His voice is the voice of shattered dreams ground amidst gravel by the passage of time. All he can see are splinters and fragments and they are so many, so sharp and so small that he cannot think what to do with them. 

It is a terrible thing to strive for a goal so completely, only to finally realise that your art has betrayed you, and Strange feels it very keenly, this knowledge that he cannot return to Arabella, that his heart and hers will remain ravaged and un-consoled by the other’s presence. Strange is usually by nature optimistic, but he knows then with a nightmarish certainty that he will never embrace Arabella again.

 _Kitty,_ he thinks. _She called the little thing Kitty._

_I had a daughter._

_I had a daughter…_

His eyes feel hot and after a while he realises his face is wet, his cheeks stained with warm rivulets of brine. He rubs at his eyes, disgusted with himself, but for the longest time he cannot stem the thin streams of salt that course down his cheeks.

You run out of feelings eventually, Strange discovers. There’s a gauntlet of emotion and, depending upon the situation one may be forced to plough through the sorry tourney not once but many times. But, whether it is hours, days, weeks or even longer, there comes a time when one feels very little. In truth it is as if one has worn through all mental sensation; one’s been so drowned in its surfeit that it ceases to register. Even agony dulls eventually into a numb sort of torpor. He has spent the last three weeks in a state of anguish so hideously exquisite he doesn’t have words to do it justice. Jonathan - fool that he is - thought he could bear the Darkness because Arabella was safe. It turns out that safety is not the be-all-end-all he once blithely imagined.

This anti-feeling, this numbness, is so alien to him that he holds the lower edge of his palm above a candle flame, curious to know whether he will register its bite. He scowls at the flame as its tip licks his skin and gives off smoke. The flesh along the edge of his palm begins to smart and very quickly to hurt. He raises an eyebrow at it. For some moments half his hand is engulfed in bright agony, but as he regards it that sensation fizzles out like a fuse that has run its course without meeting a keg of powder. A large patch of his hand is numb, although there are occasional bright stabs of pain at the edges of that area. After the count of perhaps fifteen or twenty, he takes his hand out of the candle-flame and examines it. His palm and little finger are pink as if they have been vigorously struck, but there is a wide swathe along the lower edge of his palm that is white - almost grey - the white of moth wings and fish-scales. He prods at it: the skin shifts oddly as if it is no longer part of his hand. He picks at it absently: a chunk comes away under his nail revealing raw bright red flesh beneath that weeps tears the colour of sherry. 

_That’s interesting,_ he muses, _everything has changed and become overgrown, like rings on a tree or layers to an onion. The hurt is further down and that is why it feels less prominent. But it’s still there - bright and raw and endlessly sobbing beneath the skin._

Men are born on this earth to suffer misfortune, so his father was fond of reiterating with the certain glint in his eyes of one who was currently immoderately enjoying the suffering of others. Strange’s life has not been so beset with tragedy as the lives of some, indeed for the majority of his years if anyone asked Jonathan Strange how he faired, he would have smiled and said, “I fair well, sir, tolerably well, thank you.” Things had changed after Arabella had been taken from him; I was as if she - and not magic as he had so blithely supposed - was the thread holding his world together.

Strange does not consider himself a stoic man; if anyone ever asks it is certainly not an adjective he should pick for himself. (“What? Oh, quarrelsome, I expect,” is likely what he’ll say with a half smile.) 

At Waterloo, grapeshot scythed through the leg of Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge; he was close-by the Duke of Wellington when it happened. "By God, sir,” he cried. “I've lost my leg!" 

To which his Grace, in his usual unflappable manner, replied, "By God, sir - so you have." 

It was told by Thomas Wildman, an aide-de-camp, that before the operation Lord Uxbridge smiled at the surgeon and said, "I have had a pretty long run. I have been a beau these forty-seven years, and it would not be fair to cut the young men out any longer." His only comment during the procedure was curt: "Your knives appear somewhat blunt sir."

Strange had met Lord Uxbridge and could well believe the tale was true; but he’s never supposed he would be quite so blasé under similar circumstances.

Still, like all Englishman, Jonathan Strange has been raised to bear up beneath his troubles, to shoulder them and continue. Not to complain and burden others, nor to make a passionate show of his emotions as the French, Spanish or Italians are wont to do. It is because of the weather perhaps, that this is so: it seems in hotter countries even the men may weep or sing as loudly and as unabashedly as the womenfolk and not be looked down upon. The wind and rain of England, the bite of her frost and the hardiness of her trees - all these things have impressed themselves upon the English mindset. _Look,_ a man may think, _that oak tree’s out there in all weather and one never hears it complain. Might a tree govern itself when I cannot? No indeed sir!_

He knows too that the pain he feels must pale before the depth of Arabella’s anguish. Yet, if anyone could survive such trials it would be Arabella, he believes. She has such quiet and indomitable strength - like a still lake. Sunlight or stones may disturb the surface, but they do not and cannot change the lake. She will be given succor by her friends: they will look after her with a very great quantity of care, because they are all good people and Belle is dear to them. With such support and such personal fortitude, Strange knows that her misery will fade in time and she will heal - he can see it quite clearly in his mind’s eye.

He strives to see the same outcome for himself, this eventual peaceful coda. But no matter how he tries he cannot summon it; the imagining will not form. He crashes again and again into a black roiling mass of pain and ruined hopes. Magic and its learning is still marvelous, he supposes, but experience is a very harsh and bitter teacher.

 _Man’s capacity for endurance is finite,_ Strange thinks, _no matter how great his courage. It is very unjust that one cannot simply… Damn it all, a man would shoot a lame horse or a sick hound! If a creature cannot function, if its every thought is agony, then dispatching it is both a duty and a kindness._

He wonders whom he might ask to perform this duty, this kindness for him. His Grace would not and would be highly irritated by the whole affair besides. De Lancey might, perhaps, but De Lancey is dead. Grant - Grant would, Strange reasons, although he would not be happy about it. That thought brings him a degree of comfort and he imagines for a moment handing Grant a pistol without a word. Grant’s face would have that particular expression it wore upon occasion, which Strange has decided translates as ‘an unhappy acceptance of an uneven set of circumstances’. Grant would deliberate upon the pistol for a moment, nod once - “Merlin.” - and discharge both the shot and his duty. But Colquhoun Grant isn’t here, and besides Strange doesn’t have a pistol, doesn’t have anything more dangerous than a letter opener. He will have to improvise, just as he did back in the Peninsular. 

He considers the hole in his hand, bright scarlet and still weeping. If he envelops himself in flame that awful crimson would be exposed, and everyone who sees it would witness and understand, sharing the smallest fragment of his pain. 

_We are not here to live, here in the city of Seven,_ he recites in the too-tight confines of his own skull.  
_We are in the egg of the phoenix_  
_We feel the heat of flames_  
_We are the ashes, we are the embers;_  
_We shall fly, we shall grow again -_  
_We will burn again._

He regards his hand and wrist with a flicker of his usual sardonic nature. One corner of his mouth cants higher: _“Exuret eam omnia,”_ he breathes and there is a replying illumination - bright and sudden - like a thrown pot of Greek fire.

* * *

He comes back to himself to find that he is lain upon his own bed, and there is an odd collection of scents to the air - singed cotton, bunt horsehair and bacon. 

Norrell is sitting on a chair beside the bed, diligently doing something or other. Strange’s eyes roll to the side, not entirely masters of their own fate: Norrell is tending a slab of meat, and his former pupil cannot for the life of him think why. It’s a damn poor joint at any rate - no cook worth their salt (not even Henri) would let it grace their table; it is thin, uneven and twisted looking with odd little gristled stubs at one end. 

Norrell holds a device rather like a cross and passes it back and forth over the joint, muttering. As Strange watches the little stubs grow longer and pale like the most delicate of young twigs in spring. An odd bloom (waxy, opaque and white with the lightest blush of pink) continues to wash up and over the meat, evening out its patches of livid purple-crimson and craters of smoky charcoal. 

Strange’s eyes do not seem to attend to their business - his eyelids stutter closed frequently and he cannot understand why. He bullies them back to Norrell: the older magician’s tired gaze is rheumy and he looks - if Jonathan is forced to pick an adjective, however inadequate - distressed. This in turn discomforts him and so, “It is only a piece of meat,” he rasps. He does not understand why Norrell turns his head away for a moment and rubs his left sleeve against his eyes. “It is of no importance sir,” Strange tries to tell him, but his voice lacks any strength and he is not certain he has been heard. He tries again, but a dark sort of glass seems to solidify between him and Norrell and the joint of meat and he finds he is not sorry for it when that darkness envelops him entirely.

When he wakes again, he lies still for a long time, his gaze resting blankly upon the canopy and bed-curtains. Eventually he raises his right hand and looks at it, turning it this way and that, flexing his fingers. He wonders why its appearance - perfectly usual and ordinary in every particular - seems wrong somehow. Also why he is missing one shirtsleeve, which is sadly and mysteriously truncated scant inches past the seam. He is still looking at his hand and frowning slightly when Norrell enters the room, carrying a pot of tea on a tray. 

“You’re awake, sir!” His tone is over-bright and faintly brittle. “I brought you tea,” he says redundantly. Strange watches him set the tray down on an occasional table by the bed. Norrell looks at him, and it is unclear whether he wishes to speak or whether he is waiting for Strange to. “The Darkness is moving again,” he says in the same conversational tones that most men employ when remarking upon the weather. “I have been trying to gage our trajectory, but I fear I’ve had little success. I think we are leaving Agrace, but I do not know what land could be beyond. Belasis mentions a land made of different crystals and another that is entirely flat, but he had no evidence that either actually existed. Pale of course wrote about the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness and Ormskirk lists thirty six lands, but he is unclear whether they are within the boarders of Faery…” Norrell falls silent. 

None of those words are what he wishes to say. He wishes to plead with Strange not to attempt to move the Darkness. He wants to wring promises - solemn oaths - from his former pupil to leave off the magics he has been attempting. He wants to beg Strange to hold onto whatever reason remains in his head and not to destroy himself utterly. He wants Strange to cease trying to drown his moods in brandy or incinerate them with fire. He wants Strange - tall, infuriating, sardonic, brilliant Strange - to be with him in Hurtfew. He does not want to be alone with only the broken ghost of his once scintillating student.

“Jonathan…”

“Thank you, sir,” Strange says. “For the tea.”

Norrell smiles awkwardly and nods. “Henri has prepared some excellent game pie and a cake. Will you be down later to the kitchen to try some?”

Strange blinks slowly. “No. Thank you.” His voice is heavy. “I believe I shall keep to my room. I feel a little out of sorts.”

“I could bring up one of the daybooks if you wanted…”

Strange shakes his head. “I do not wish to think on magic today.”

This alarms Norrell, although he comforts himself that the wildness that has gripped Strange in its talons for the past three weeks has abated. Strange’s passion is not just calm, it is absent. He no longer radiates mania or fury or even desperation - just exhaustion tinged with melancholy. Whilst Norrell cannot imagine it a very pleasant state for a gentleman to find himself in, he thinks it infinitely preferable to any other mood Strange has entertained of late.

When he writes in his daybook, he does not mention how he heard wild laughter and found Strange standing in the middle of his bedchamber, watching the flesh blaze and melt off his own arm. He does not write how he stared in shock, horrified by the smell of it and by Strange’s look of delighted fascination. He does not set down the magic he employed to douse the flames, nor how Strange looked at the near skeletal ruins of his arm, then across at Norrell, before swaying ponderously and dropping like a stone.

For all his faults, Norrell is capable of great consideration: he would not wish to have a record kept of his lowest and wildest moments (should he ever have any) - he would be mortified at the very thought of such a record. And so he imagines Strange would be likewise shamed. Norrell may not hesitate to bind his fellow magician within a pantry, but he would never stoop to _that._

This is what he writes instead:

 **2nd December**  
_He remains abed. Hurtfew has moved once more._  
**3rd December**  
S _trange is himself again although still subdued and out of sorts. I have weakened Henri’s tincture by twelve and may employ it upon Strange’s wine as I see fit, depending upon his wildness or melancholy._

The land beyond Agrace is made entirely of crystal, just as Belasis supposed. There are trees made of peridot and beryl, mountains of tourmaline capped with frosted diamonds, and a deserted ruined city made of amethyst. It is very beautiful and (had they not been within the Darkness) very blinding. It is also remarkably dull and rather eerie: both magicians are relieved when the Pillar of Night moves on after only four days. 

Mr Strange recovers from his distemper much as another man might recover from influenza. That is to say he is quiet and withdrawn with much of his usual character quashed. His eyes are tired and his face gaunt; he does not eat as often as Norrell thinks he ought. Though fundamentally fussy and selfish by nature, Mr Norrell schools himself strictly in what attentiveness and sympathy it occurs to him to bestow. He makes the other magician tea and does not scold him when he leaves books face down upon a table or chair. He manages not to be peevish when he speaks and is not attended or even answered because Strange is staring at nothing, lost within some unhappy tangle of his own thoughts. 

Norrell is nervous when Strange examines his right hand; it is a thing he does quite often, always with a puzzled expression as if he expects it to be a different shape or colour or perhaps not there at all. “I think I dreamt…” he begins uncertainly to Norrell, but his voice trails away.

Norrell makes a startled, querulous noise which he tidies beneath a comically exaggerated look of enquiry. “Yes?”

Strange looks at him, and then back at his hand. “Nothing,” he says at length. “It is nothing.”

Strange stands for hours before the silver dish, looking at the surface of the water as if he might conjure up a vision upon it. He never does though, and Norrell tactfully does not quiz him on the matter. (Norrell does not even - although how he wishes to! - ask Strange how he defeated the _Danish Nutshell._ That, like vipers and burnt flesh, like poppy tinctures and broken pots of jam, is best left to the past.)

By the time the year has turned, spring and summer ended and autumn taken up the season’s crown, Strange is entirely his old self again. The only trace that remains to show he was ever afflicted is the business with the moths. Norrell dislikes them intensely: always fluttering against windows or through candle-flames like the lost souls of butterflies. Strange however will not suffer them to be killed and in the summer he goes so far as to place little bubbles of magic around the candles in Hurtfew so the moths cannot burn themselves. The moths gather around the bubbles, basking in the warmth and light, their papery wings making a flickering lattice-work like living Chinese lanterns.

Norrell is disgusted. “They are beastly things sir! They get amidst clothes and books and nibble holes. Why do you attend them so?”

Strange’s gaze remains on the moths. “For Kitty,” he says quietly, his voice drawn and hollow.

Mr Norrell does not mention them again.


End file.
